March 28, 2019, Lviv Polytechnic National University hosted an international scientific and practical seminar on Ukrainian as a Foreign Language: Search for Innovations through the Prism of the Experience of Teaching Other Languages. With this seminar the International Institute of Education, Culture and Diaspora Relations at Lviv Polytechnic started the series of this year’s events dedicated to the problems of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language.
The event was organized in the context of a new state language policy aimed at spreading the Ukrainian language in Ukraine and abroad. The event was intended to start an important dialogue between centers for the study of different languages (Ukrainian, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Japanese and Korean) and use the experience to teach Ukrainian as a foreign language.
IECDR director, Candidate of Pedagogic Sciences, Associate Professor Iryna Kliuchkovska and Honorary Consul of Canada in Ukraine, Oksana Vynnytska-Yusypovych addressed the guests of the seminar.
Specialists came to a consensus on the effectiveness of communicative and cultural approaches to teaching a foreign language. Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, President of Public organization Alliance française de Lviv Vasyl Kmet emphasized on the efficiency of intercultural communication. Iryna Bahmut, lecturer of the Ukrainian language and literature at the University of Szeged in Hungary, spoke about the method of two-level synchronization in teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language.
Lecturers Oksana Lernatovych (University of Pittsburgh in the USA), Iryna Zbyr (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Korea), Tetiana Ouergi (Międzyszkolny Punkt Nauczania Języka Ukraińskiego in Poland) shared the peculiarities of teaching the Ukrainian language abroad. They described what achievements and gaps are in the field of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language, as well as shared experience in certifying knowledge.
During the seminar, the issues of certification and standardization of Ukrainian as a foreign language at the present stage were discussed.
Therefore, in their speeches experts in the field of teaching methods of Ukrainian as a foreign language, drawing on their many years of experience, outlined the main achievements and problems in this area, as well as formulated the main vectors of further movement.
Photos by Nataliia Pavlyshyn
